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Allin

warn

verbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//wɔːn//
  • United States//woɹn//
  • Australia//woːn//
  • Scotland//wɔɾn//
  • //wɔːn//

To make (someone) aware of (something impending); especially: To make (someone) aware of impending danger, evil, etc.

verb

  1. 1

    To make (someone) aware of (something impending); especially: To make (someone) aware of impending danger, evil, etc.

    We waved a flag to warn the oncoming traffic about the accident.

    I phoned to warn him of the road closure.

  2. 2

    To make (someone) aware of (something impending); especially: To notify or inform (someone, about something).

    I warned him he'd be getting a huge box of birthday presents from me.

  3. 3

    To make (someone) aware of (something impending); especially: To summon (someone) to or inform of a formal meeting or duty.

    The sheriff warned her to appear in court.

    Committee being warned these following were absent or short …

    The people had been invited to the funeral, or warnt, by a special messenger a few days before the funeral took place.

    [...] the plaintiff fraudulently warned the meeting for November 15, giving only five days' notice [...]

  4. 4

    obsoleteTo make (someone) aware of (something impending); especially: To make a sound (e.g. clicking or whirring) indicating that it is about to strike or chime (an hour).

    Hark! the clock is warning ten;

    No, not a word more, Andrew; the clock has warned for nine, and I am off.

    The clock warned, and the hands pointed to a few minutes before the hour. The preacher looked towards it. "And, as you sit here," he cried," the Old Year is dragging out its last moments and the New Year is coming up —"

  5. 5

    To caution or admonish (someone) against unwise or unacceptable behaviour.

    He was warned against crossing the railway tracks at night.

    Don't let me catch you running in the corridor again, I warn you.

  6. 6

    To advise or order to go or stay away.

    A sign warns trespassers off/away from the site.

  7. 7

    To give warning.

    then Iames Cephas and Iohn [...] agreed with vs that we shuld preache amonge the Hethen and they amonge the Iewes: warnynge only that we shulde remember the poore.

    She is his deepest innocence in spaces of bough and hay before wishes were given a different name to warn that they might not come true [...].

    She warned that he was seriously thinking of withdrawing his offer to part the waters, ‘so that all you'll get at the Arabian Sea is a saltwater bath [...]’.

    Every country has its resident experts who warn that imported television will destroy the national consciousness and replace it with Dallas, The Waltons, Star Trek and Twin Peaks.

Etymology

From Middle English warnen, warnien (“to warn; admonish”), from Old English warnian (“to take heed; warn”), from Proto-Germanic *warnōną (“to warn; take heed”), from Proto-Indo-European *wer- (“to be aware; give heed”). Cognate with Dutch waarnen (obsolete), German Low German warnen, German warnen, Swedish varna, Icelandic varna.

Forms

past tense
warned
past participle
warned
present participle
warning
third person singular
warns
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).